A Rogue Among Men
by Tashimia
Summary: AU - Rogue is captured by Stryker and put in his lab. In between experiments she meets the other mutant-captives and suddenly she has to learn how to survive, not only the experiments, but also among the inmates. The meeting between her and a certain beast changes everything and gives her hope of a life beyond the lab. Mature content later on, Rogan, fluff, hurt, angst, etc.
1. Chapter 1

_**A Rogue Among Men:**_

* * *

_Summary: Stryker is trying to find a cure for mutants and while continuing his experiments he has collected quite a bunch in his laboratory, both feral, psychics and those who can't be categorized. The pride of his collection is the feral who's healing power he believes holds the key to the cure. But one day, another mutant is captured. A mutant with special powers._

"_If she can steal only their powers and keep them, perhaps they can live like humans afterwards. Perhaps she is another key to the cure." _

* * *

_**1.**_

* * *

The young woman pulls her green cloak closed around her, tugging the hood further down in front of her face. The snow has already turned the cloak stiff and frozen, and she can barely feel her feet.

She continues walking anyway, for she has no home to go back to.

She is alone. Unwanted. A rogue among men.

Chased and hated because she is different. Feared for her powers, loathed for the amount of hurt that she has caused.

She is poison.

Seeing the motel up ahead she quickens her pace, the lure of warmth and food motivating her to force her tired body to push forward through the snow.

Rest.

What she would not give for a place to rest her tired soul. How she wished for a place she could stay, just for a week or two. Anything but having to find a new place to stay every night. Having to roam through the world, never finding a place to stay. Homeless.

She pushes the door open and walks inside, pulling the hood away from her face and her long dark hair. She bites her lip as she walks toward the receptionist at the desk.

"Could I have a room, please?" she asks him, her voice thick with her southern accent.

The receptionist looks at her with bored eyes, before finding a key in a drawer and putting it on the desk. Then he nods at the sign with the price.

"One night only?" he asks.

She nods, putting the cash down on the counter. "One night." she confirms.

Then she takes the key as he counts the money and walks over to the dimly lit stairs. She glances at the room number, _204_, before making her way up the stairs to the right floor. The hallway is dirty and there is trash on the floor. She is happy that the dim light hides the state of the carpet, but she fears that the brownish-gray was once red.

Unlocking the door she walks into the small room that is her's for the night. She locks the door behind her, removes her cloak and her boots and turns on the heater, but beyond that she does not bother doing much before falling on the bed.

A tired sigh escapes her lips and she falls asleep.

.

o.O.o

.

A creak wakes her, as if her sleep was merely faked, and only her breathing betrays her fear. Somebody is walking the hallway outside her door. Somebody is coming closer.

The sound of footsteps stops.

She sits up in her bed, silently, and slides down the side of it, putting it between her and the door. She reaches out, grabbing her boots and her cloak.

There is no sounds now, but she still does not relax. Instead she pulls off her cloves and sticks them in her pocket, leaving the skin on her hands bare. She mounts no weapons. She does not have too.

The handle on the door moves as somebody tries opening the door from the outside. They find it locked.

She pulls on her boots. They are made of leather, and she only has to tighten the laces to keep them on her feet. When she binds the laces of the second boot, somebody grabs the door handle again, and this time it opens. They must have picked the lock.

She sits in total stillness, hidden behind the bed, as somebody walks into the room. For a moment, the person stands still.

Then a chuckle escapes him.

"I can smell you, little lamb." he says, his voice rough. "I know you're here."

She continues her silence, her heart beating out of her chest, pounding in her throat.

"Little lamb." he almost purrs. "Come out, come out." He steps closer to the bed, she can almost see how he leans forward a bit, his feral senses giving away her position.

"The bed can't hide you, little lamb." He says.

And she knows that he is right. So she stands, her back straight and her shoulders square. She will not let fear chase her pride away. She will not let tiredness slump her shoulders.

She keeps her cloak in her hand, not wanting to let go of it.

In front of her stands a feral. A mutant like herself, but with a different power. No one has a power like hers. This one has beastly black eyes, long yellowed clams instead of nails and long hair, the same sand-like color as a lion's fur. Or perhaps the yellow of a tiger. As he smiles at her, she sees his fangs and the sight makes her shiver.

"I smell your fear." the man says, his voice filled with satisfaction, or perhaps lust. He is enjoying her terror.

Her jaw tenses with anger.

"What do you want?" she asks him. Her voice shaking, but her eyes filled with steel.

"You." he answers. "I promised I'd catch you."

She swallows something. Her throat is dry and her mouth is drier.

"Who?" she asks. "Who did you promise?"

The man smiles. Or perhaps he just shows off his fangs to scare her, like an animal threatening its prey.

"A friend." he says. "You'll meet him soon enough."

She shakes her head, putting on her cloak and closing it at the neck to keep it from slipping off. The man's eyes are locked on her every movement.

"No." she says, her mouth set.

"No?" the man sneers.

"I won't be going with you." she tells him, before taking a calculated step back.

"You don't have a choice." the man growls.

She takes another step back.

And he leaps at her, his claws stretched out and reaching for her. His lips is pulled so far back from his teeth that she can see the flesh above them.

She reaches out with her hands, grasping his face and letting her power do its job.

Within seconds he is lying on top of her, shaking, his veins growing black as he gasps for air, for life, for everything she is stealing from him. And she herself shakes from what she if receiving as she pries her hands off his face and pushes him off her. She gets to her feet, and moves toward the door, only to realize that another mutant is standing there, his arms spread, ready to prevent her from leaving.

Instead she turns to the window, and pulling her cloak up to cover her bare arms and face, jumps through it. It must be the feral she just absorbed, for normally she would never attempt something like this. Now however, it is like she's never done anything else, and she lands securely and without getting hurt. The snow helps too as it makes for a softer landing.

She hesitates there for a second before running to an alleyway, hoping to hide. To escape.

Her fingers itches, her nails hurt. Her canine teeth do too. She stumbles, her hands pushing down into the snow covering the sidewalk. She shakes all over as a roar echoes in her mind. The feral tears through her thoughts, screaming about pain and blood. She shakes with wanting. And then she tries to fight off the mind that she has stolen.

Getting to her feet she stumbles into the alley, keeping on her legs only with the support of the wall. She continues down and behind the building, praying to god that they don't have another feral to track her. Praying to god that it would snow and hide her footprints. Praying that the mutant she left in the room with the feral would stay to help his friend instead of hunting her down.

The tremors continue to ravage her and a growl escapes her as her new fangs press against her lower lip. Her prayers has not been answered, for she can hear them coming. She can hear their footsteps all the way out on the street, growing nearer, coming closer. She digs her claws into her shoulders, and the pain helps her to focus. It gives her the concentration she needs to build a wall in her mind, to drive away the feral.

Shaking, she gets to her feet again and walks down the backside of the building. She keeps her hand on the wall, her fingers curling in the cold and growing numb.

She does not even consider putting on her gloves. Her skin is her weapon and she would be a fool to cover it up.

Her pursuers come around the corner and see her, and as they do, they start running towards her. So she turns to face them and puts her hands out, her fingers spread.

"Stop!" she yells at them.

And they do.

"Put down your hands." one of them say. "Give up."

She just stares at them, her face void of expression.

"Let me go." she says. "Or I will hurt you."

They laugh at her.

"Well." the one who spoke before says. "That almost sounds like what we were going to say to you."

The feral throws itself against the wall in her mind, and she growls at them.

They stop laughing, but as the feral's powers take hold of her again, she hears the footsteps behind her just before something heavy hits her in the back of her head.

She collapses in the snow, every bit of strength leaving her body as the world grows dark around her.

.

o.O.o

.

The first things she notices is that she is warm and that her head hurts. The next thing is that she is lying down and that lying down makes her very, very nauseous.

So she opens her eyes.

The room is white and gray, void of any other colors. Like a hospital room or perhaps a new apartment. Untouched by humans, yet to be claimed and marked as somebody's private place or property. Perhaps already claimed by somebody. Someone neither human nor beast, for both of those mark their territories.

Sitting up, she finds, only strengthens the nausea, but she does it anyway, so that she can look around. The room is empty, except for the bed on which she lies and a small table beside it, but her attention leaves the room and is taken up by the garment that she is wearing.

Somebody has dressed her in a white tunic while she slept, unshapely and much like something you would see patients wear in a hospital, except the back has no slit. The sleeves only reaches her elbows, but her hands and arms are covered by white cotton gloves, reaching up past her elbows.

Pulling the cover aside, she discovers that the tunic is indeed that, a loose shirt reaching past her butt. White cotton pants, same as the tunic and the gloves, clothes her legs in soft folds, all the way to the white socks on her feet.

She shivers and hugs herself, feeling violated by the fact that somebody had changed her clothes while she was unconscious, touched her and unclad her. No doubt they themselves had been wearing gloves all the while.

She bites her lip till she taste blood. Then she swallows, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, her eyes on the floor.

The door swings open and she looks up to see a man step inside.

He looks like a pig.

A little fat man with glasses and a ratlike smile plastered on his face. Her dad would shoot rats with the rifle back home, when he saw them in the garage. The thought both soothes her and makes her ache.

"Hello dear, I thought you'd be awake by now." the man says.

"Don't call me dear." she says. Her voice does not shake, and that is a small victory that gives her strength. Her eyes flicker around the room till they note the small surveillance-camera in the corner of the ceiling.

"Where am I?" she asks the pig-man.

"My laboratory, of course." the man says.

She thinks about it for a moment. A lab. She guesses that that makes her the rat, and not him.

"And you are?" she asks him.

"Ah." he says. "My name is Stryker, my dear Rogue."

She glares at him when he calls her dear again. And she squints as he uses her mutant name. Rogue.

"How do you know my name?" she asks him, her voice cold.

He examines her, his small eyes swiftly taking in her entire form.

"I have heard about you." he says. "About your powers, and I have been tracking you."

Rogue lets her fingers slide over the cloth of the glove on her other hand.

"Why?" she asks Stryker.

"Because I think that your power is beautiful." he says. "And because I believe that it might be what I've searched for. The power to remove other mutants' powers."

She stiffens, pulls back and away from him as fast as she possible can.

"I won't let you." she whispers. "I won't let you use me." she hisses.

Stryker smiles at her, but his little pig eyes show no acceptance of her words.

"I do believe my dear Rogue, that you have no choice in the matter." he pauses, as if he is thinking about something, before smiling his rat-smile again.

"Rogue." he says. "A well-chosen name." his eyes stares into her's and make her shiver with sudden fear. "Always fleeing. Always stealing." he purses his lips. "Only you don't steal stuff. You steal powers... Life."

And with those words he leaves her, the door closing behind him.

* * *

o.O.o


	2. Chapter 2

_**2.**_

* * *

Time moves slowly in an empty room, as Rogue discovered all too quickly. From time to time she would feel the Feral, the new addition to the mess of minds inside her mind, push against the imaginary walls that keeps her sane. So she would spend some of the time meditating, enforcing the walls she had build so hastily while trying to escape. When the walls are thick enough to contain the Feral, she unfolds her legs and slides down from her bed. Then she starts pacing the floor.

When she grows tired of pacing, she starts picking at her pillow, pulling her gloves off and on and after that she decides not to amuse the people watching her and sits down on the bed again.

She is bored. Bored. Bored. Bored.

She sighs, letting herself fall back on the bed.

Then she giggles, feeling the madness of the situation creeping up on her.

She _did _wish for a place she could stay for more than a week. Now she had it, although not in the way she wanted.

Tears sprout in her eyes. No, not the way she wanted it.

In a way, it is almost a relief when the door opens again, so many hours after it opened the first time.

In walks a woman, dressed in what looks like a gray nurse outfit, carrying a clipboard filled with papers. She pulls out a pen.

"What is your name?" she asks.

Rogue does not answer. Just cocks her head slightly and smiles. She is trying to provoke this woman, wanting a reaction.

The woman clicks her tongue, annoyed.

"What is your name?" she repeats. "Talk or your supper will be withdrawn."

Rogue still says nothing.

"Breakfast too." the woman adds with a tight smile.

Rogue stays silent.

"There goes your lunch." the woman chirps.

Rogue's stomach growls and she bites her lip. So she surrenders. She made her point and got her reaction.

"Rogue." she says, her voice hoarse.

The woman smiles.

"That wasn't hard now, was it?" she asks. "Although we already knew that. I was talking about your _real _name."

Rogue shrugs.

"It's ma real name." she says. "Ain't got no other anymore."

The woman shakes her head.

"Of course you do, honey. And we need to know so that we can reference with your family line."

That makes Rogue interested.

"Reference what?" she askes.

"Your mutant gene." the woman answers. "Now, my name is Lucinda. And yours?"

Rogue smiles, as sweetly as she can.

"Ain't. Got. No. Other. Name. Than. Rogue." she answers, slowly, pausing between each word as if the woman was no more than a halfwit with a slow mind. She has already decided that she does not like Lucinda.

And obviously, Lucinda holds no love for her in return.

"And it seems you have decided to fast all day tomorrow." Lucinda says, scratching down something on her board. "Do you at least know your age?" she asks.

Rogue smiles. But she stays silent. She does not want to give them anything that they do not already have. No knowledge, no easy victories. Even as her stomach turns with hunger,- how long has it been since she last ate?- she would rather starve.

Lucinda almost sneers at her before putting down a new note on the paper, before swiftly putting her pen away.

"Great." she says in her chirpy voice. "That's that food spared."

She smooths her hair and straightens her uniform before giving Rogue a nod of goodbye.

"I will see you this evening when Dr. Stryker begins the initial tests." and with those charming words, she turns and walks swiftly out of the door. As with Styker, it clicks and locks behind her. Rogue knows it does. She tried earlier, after Dr. Pig left, only to find it locked. She does not bother now.

Instead she sits on the bed again, pulling her knees to her chest and considers what she knows.

Stryker holds her captive in a lab because of her powers. Because of what she can do. They know her mutant name, but not the one she was christened with. She also knows that they do not know her exact age. The Feral is the only new occupant of her mind, so no one can have touched her skin while they changed her clothes, and from Stryker's earlier words, they must know that she 'steals' the powers. That means that they know that she can use the powers she takes, but they cannot know any of the details. Perhaps they do not know that the powers stay stored within her mind, like the people she takes them from.

They are going to run tests on her in the evening. What tests? Are they going to force her to use her power in some way or another? She can not imagine any other 'tests' they would want to run on her, but she fears that her imagination is all too limited compared to theirs.

It has been little but a year and a half since she was chased from her home and she has been on the road since then. In fact, she is almost certain, that this all white and light gray room, is the cleanest room she has been in in all that time. Funny how that somehow matters to her. Makes her feel unsafe.

She spits on the floor.

Rogue honestly could not care less about the cleaning staff of Dr. Pig's lab. Besides, why should a rogue, a chased down outcast, care about the rules of men?

For good measure she spits at the floor again, before lying down on the bed, all too easily slipping back into boredom.

.

o.O.o

.

Rogue has a problem. She has had a problem for a while now. She has been sitting, and when that got too horrid she took to standing and then to pacing, and then to jumping from one leg to another.

Rogue has to pee. And she has already searched the room and found it all too empty of options to do so. But she refuses to pee on the floor like an animal.

Instead she knocks on her door.

"Hey!" she yells. "Let me out!"

When there is no reaction, she slams her hands against the door again.

"Hey!" she yells, even higher. "I've got to go to the toilet!"

Kicking the door seems like a good idea, so she does that too, until she has to stop because her toes hurt. Then she stomps in the ground with an angry snort.

For a second she considers calling upon one of her stored mutations, but discards it. It's not worth the satisfaction Stryker will get from her using her power.

So she sits down in the middle of the floor, trying to find some comfort despite her pressing needs.

Luckily she does not have to sit there long, before the door swings open and Lucinda walks in. She smiles.

"Sorry for the wait." she says. "Supper was such a pleasant affair, that I really couldn't tear myself away till now." She waves at Rogue. "Well get up. I'll take you to the testing side."

Rogue crosses her arms.

"And the toilet?" she asks, lifting an eyebrow at the unpleasantly pleasant lady.

Lucinda smiles, tilting her head.

"Of course, sweetling." she says. "You had but to ask."

"I _did _ask!" Rogue yells, angrily. "But y'all just ignored me!"

That earns her another smile and a small shake of Lucinda's head.

"No, you did not." she says. "You just said you had to go, you did not ask to."

And with those words the annoying little twit of a woman turns on her heel and walks out the door, stopping only to hold it open for Rogue, and only for a second. It almost closes in her face as she follows Lucinda, but she manages to make it out of the room.

Outside there is a hallway with many doors like the one Rogue just walked through. It looks like an asylum. A place to keep mad-men and crazies locked up, away from the eyes of the public. A cold, unfeeling place.

She considers escaping, but instead she finds herself following closely behind Lucinda, door after door. She does not know the way out, but she has a feeling that if she tries to find it, she will have to deal with somebody worse than Lucinda. So she bides her time.

They leave the hallway for a new one, this one gray instead of white, and here two men wait to escort them. They fall in behind her, like two prison guards behind their captive, ready to hurt her. She walks faster, closer to Lucinda, feeling like a chased rabbit. The men walk closer too, so close that she can feel the heat of their bodies.

Lucinda stops in front of a door with a toilet sign on it. She stops the men from following Rogue in there, with a smile.

"That won't be necessary." she says. "I am sure that Rogue won't take too much time, will you Sweetling?" she asks and looks at Rogue with a smile.

Rogue nods, feeling bile rise to her mouth. This woman makes her sick. But she goes into the toilet unfollowed, and for that she is grateful. For the same reason she finishes quickly and washes her hands. The room holds no other doors than the one she entered from and no windows. As an escape-path it is useless.

Lucinda winks at her when she comes back out.

"Much better, isn't it?" she asks, before continuing towards wherever they are going. The men follow up close again, giving Rogue the creeps.

"After the initial-tests we will move you to the same block as the other mutants. There is bathrooms there, unlike in the rooms of the A-block where you have been kept so far, and there are other people there, so you won't be as bored." Lucinda tells her. "of course, you'll be moved back in block A if you hurt any of the others in the B-block, but you won't, will you Sweetling?"

Rogue shakes her head, but knows that she will hurt them if they touch her or try to hurt her.

"Great." Lucinda exclaims, her voice still light and happy.

She opens a thick steel door, letting Rogue walk in first.

In the middle of the room there is a gurney with manacles on it, and to the sides there are stuff that looks like exercise equipment and other sorts of weird machines. Only the men behind her keeps her from running away. Instead she stands tall, refusing to show her fear. Her jaw is tense.

One of the walls have a great glass window, black and mirror-like, like the one-way glass they have in the interrogation-rooms at the police-stations. Beside it a door opens and Stryker walks in. He smiles in greeting and nod towards something that looks like a running-mill.

"Rogue." he says. "If you'd please step over here, so that we can test your endurance."

She crosses her arms.

"Why?" she asks.

Dr. Pig's smile disappears.

"Because I asked nicely." he says, nodding at the men. They step forward, grabbing her arms and lifting her on top of the running-mill. "And now I ask you to run, so run." he tells her.

For a moment she does nothing, still trying to decide if cooperating is wort it, or if it is simply giving up. Then she bites her lip, making her decision.

"No." she says, staring straight at the pig-like man that is her captor.

He makes a grimace that makes his already pig-like face seem fatter and uglier. Then he nods at the men again and they take hold of her hands, pressing them down on the machine and manacling her to it.

Stryker tilts his head and points to the silver-steel that her hands are pressed against.

"The cotton gloves won't protect you from the electricity when I turn this on. The only time it won't shock you is when you run, and the longer you stand still, the bigger the shock." he explains. "So, run."

And Rogue shakes her head as Stryker turns on the electricity.

The first shock stings. The next make her teeth ache and the third makes her whimper in pain. At the fourth shock she starts running, simply because she understands that the pain will grow, and that scared her more than the pain itself. The knowledge that it can always grow stronger and the knowledge that at some point her own strength is going to leave her.

So she runs while Stryker takes her time.

* * *

o.O.o


	3. Chapter 3

_**3.**_

* * *

She is pushed roughly into a cell when they are done with her. She hurts all over, both from the electric shocks and because of her exhausted muscles. She barely has the energy to stand and much less to think about all that has happened, so instead she just collapses on the bed and closes her eyes. They are moist from tears that she does not have the energy to shed.

First they made her run until she could no longer breathe and her legs hurt more than the shocks. Then they removed her from the running-mill and put her on the gurney, taking all kinds of tests and measuring her body's reactions to the run. Things like how fast her heart was beating, how much oxygen that was left in her blood and after that they started discussing what the next tests were going to be.

By then she had been too tired to concentrate, even though she tried to listed. She can barely remember what they said. Something about how her mutation would work under duress. They called this test the baseline, something to compare the others too.

Even in her tired state, she shivers all over, too tense to pass out or fall asleep. She pulls off the cotton gloves they had put on her, trembling. Perhaps she will be able to sleep if she knows that she has her weapons ready. On impulse she calls forth the power of the feral, remembering the feeling of strength that he had brought to her. It seems to soothe her body and the trembling disappears together with some of her tenseness.

It still takes a long time before the darkness comes and carries her to sweet unconsciousness. A long time where she has to fight off the instinct to claw at the wall, growling like the Feral.

.

o.O.o

.

She wakes up with a set when somebody drags a stick across the bars of her cell. Her heart is beating out of her chest as she pushes herself up against the wall, away from the noise, like an animal avoiding detection.

It is almost grotesque how much it reminds her of a scene from a prison-movie. Only difference is that she is dressed in mad-house white instead of prison-orange.

"Get up you Beasts!" a man yells outside. "Breakfast in ten, like normal!"

Rogue gets to her feet, walking over to the bars and looking out.

There is cells on the other side of the hallway, and she guesses beside her own too, and in all of them she sees people getting up, stretching and moving to their doors, waiting like herself. She has no doubt that they are mutants too. Some of them are obvious, since they have tails or fur in strange colors, where others just look human.

But no human would be locked up here. Of that she is certain.

A bell sounds, loud and clear, and the cell doors pop open in the other cells. Not her door though.

Suddenly she remembers that Lucinda has taken away her food, so she backs away from the door and goes back to her bed. There she picks up the gloves and puts them back on, feeling secure enough behind the bars now that she is awake and unhurt. She crawls up on the bed, folding her legs and taking a deep breath. There is nothing she can do right now, except trying to pass the time and wait for a chance to escape.

Her stomach growls

"Stupid Lucinda." she mutters, making somebody laugh outside her cell.

Looking up, she sees a young man standing there, his arms crossed over his chest.

"You upset Lucy and lost your breakfast?" he asks with a grin.

Rogue looks at him, not bothering to answer him. Instead she pulls her legs to her chest and put her arms around them.

"Not much of a conversationalist, are you?" the man asks, tilting his head. "What's your thing?" he continues.

Rogue rests her chin on her knees. That is something that she does not want to answer, no matter who asks. Not in here. Not somebody she has never met before and does not trust.

"Something to do with your hands, I guess." the man says, smirking. "No reason for them to give you gloves otherwise."

The bell sounds again and the man chuckles.

"See you later, Mutie. Breakfast's calling." he says with a wave before leaving. Rogue snorts. His double pun on her being a mutant and not wanting to talk to him is almost as funny as her situation. Or not at all.

Jerk.

When he has gone, she relaxes her position and lies down on the bed, closing her eyes.

The next testing should be this evening if what Lucinda said was right. Perhaps they would test her every evening.

She starts counting the powers that she has stored away inside her, hoping to find something that can help her escape. She has the different personalities locked up in each their own room within her mind, one section for humans and another for mutants.

Suddenly she feels sick. Her own system to keep her sanity is too much like the cell-block she is in now. Locking people up.

She knows that it is different. That the people in her mind are only copies, but they scream to be released, scream to get out. To be free.

Getting to her feet, she looks around the cell to find a place to throw up, finding nothing. She forces herself to keep it down, but her trembling has returned.

Closing her eyes again, she goes to the the rooms within her mind, counting the doors, and the people behind them.

The feral is behind the newest door, growling and roaring, wanting blood. She thinks about those of his powers she has used, wondering if its all of them or if he can more. She knows that he has heightened senses, strength, fangs and claws. A healing ability too, she realizes. Otherwise she would have been in a world of pain when she woke up.

Moving past his door she reaches the next one. This one she walks right past without acknowledging it. This woman's ability was to change other peoples' skin color when touching them. Rogue had met the drunk woman in a bar and when she did not listen to Rouge's protests against seeing her 'party-trick', Rogue ended up with a new person in her head.

Behind the next door was a guy who's feet and hands grew webbed when he entered water and who could hold his breath far longer than any normal human. He had tried to mug her back when it was still summer. He had chosen to do it right beside a river, no doubt so that he could get away with ease. He did not.

Then there was the guy with the ability to spit spikes from his tongue, the girl with a voice so beautiful that you could get addicted to it and the man with the green eyes and the power to see electricity. There were a couple others, but some of them were fading and others were too jumbled up or strong for her to be able to let them out without risking completely loosing herself.

Most of the mutations would be useless if she had to try and escape from her cell or the testing-room. Besides, it always made her dizzy and confused when she used the powers of others. And guilty. She knew that she hurt people when she touched them, risked killing them, and she never wanted to do that to anyone. She could live with it when they attacked her, cause then it was self-defense, but she hated it when she absorbed strangers by accident and suddenly felt that rush of terror that they felt when their life-force started leaving them.

She hated it as much as she hated the constant screaming in her head. The constant battle to stay in control and to keep the others' memories away from her own, their nightmares out of her sleep and their powers under control. She might absorb them, but she could never control them unless she practiced with them for hours a day.

She opens her eyes back in her cell, and bites her lip. It is not like she has a lot to work with, especially if she does not want to give away the fact that she can draw upon any mutation she has ever absorbed. She sighs. At least the new healing ability might make it easier to survive their testing.

Suddenly her door pops open and she figures that breakfast is over and done with. She gets to her feet and walks over and out, determined to discover as much as she can about the prison.

She stops only a couple of steps later, faced with two giant men blocking her way. One of them is eying her appreciatively, and the other is smirking. Rogue shrinks inside. She knows all too well these type of men from the bars on her travels. They are always looking for two things, a fight or a woman. Most times both.

"New girl, ey?" the smirking one says, leaning in close. "So, what's your thing love?" he asks.

Rogue feels the feral tear at her mind-walls again, -will he never stop?- and a low growl escapes her lips before she can stop it. Instinctively she wants to take a step back, but she does not. Her pride will not allow it. Instead she faces their challenge.

"Ooh!" the other one laughs. "Fierce this one!"

"Bet she's a feral." Smirk-face says.

"Leave me alone!" Rogue hisses. "I'm not in the mood."

"She doesn't have no sharp teeth, Rikey." the guy says.

"Must be a furry thing then." Smirk-faced Rikey smirks and grabs her wrist when she tries to step around him. "Won't you show us your pelt little beast?"

She hisses at him again, letting the feral closer to the surface, finding fangs pressing against the inside of her lower lip. Claws poke holes in her gloves, and she knows that Stryker and the others will notice. Anger fills her that these two idiots has made her reveal one of her secrets.

"Let. Go." she says, loud and clear. "Or I _will _hurt you."

The men laugh. One of them grow spikes on his eyebrows and down is arms, while Smirk-face's face seems to split in two as his mouth grows bigger to reveal the largest and most disgusting tongue she has ever seen.

"That's far enough, Rikey, Norman." the young man from before interrupts, twisting Rikey's hand and forcing him to let go of her wrist. "Give the girl a break. The guards are watching."

Rogue had not seen him coming, and she pulls away from all three of them as fast as she can, rubbing her wrist. The claws and the fangs disappears as Rikey and Norman steps back a bit, glancing up at the guards. With a disdaining look at Rogue and the young man, the signs of their mutations disappear too.

"It isn't your problem Pyro." Norman says to the young man. "We're just having a bit of fun with her, s'all."

Pyro or whatever chuckles.

"Fun is fine and all, but you know what happens if you upset the guards by using your mutations." he says. "She isn't worth a scene in the hallway."

Rikey makes a grimace and shrugs, motioning Norman to go with him.

"She's just a little beastie, Pyro and you won't be around forever. Nor will the guards." Smirk-face leans in close to Rogue as they leave, whispering in her ear. "We'll see you around, beastie."

A threat. The son of a bitch just threatened her.

Pyro just smiles and turns to look at Rogue.

"I see you made other friends than me, Mutie." he says. Then he nods at her ruined gloves. "I wouldn't have called you for a beast." he says, frowning. "You look more like a psyche."

"And you?" she asks, deciding that being known as a feral was better than being known for the truth in this prison-like environment.

"She speaks!" he laughs. Then he winks at her. "I go by Pyro for a reason, you know. Not that my power's especially useful in here."

He grins, a bit of madness shining in his eyes.

"There's no spark to start the fire."

* * *

o.O.o


	4. Chapter 4

_**4.**_

* * *

Pyro turned out to be a helpful guide to the life in the B-block. He briefed her on useful details, like the placement of the toilets and the shower-room (and the chamberpots below the beds in the cells). He told her about some of the rules, for example that the usage of power was allowed, unless used to hurt others, and how the bell worked. It would ring when the doors opened before a meal, and ten minutes before they closed. When it rang while you were in the hall you had to hurry back to your cell if you did not want the guards to hurt you. He also made sure that she understood that the safest place was out where the guards could see her, and not in her cell as she might have otherwise believed.

If a mutant attacked another in the cells, the guards would do nothing to stop it. They did not care enough to stop what they did not have to watch.

"Most of the mutants are in here because they did something illegal." Pyro tells her.

Rogue looks at him, confused as to this information. She had believed them all to be victims, kidnapped. But she does not tell Pyro this, having already decided that the less people knew about her, the better. Instead she nods as if she already knows this, quickly hiding her initial confusion.

"Some, like our friends from before, are here because they hurt somebody. So the state gives them to Stryker, who luckily has a prison suited for muties." he grins, the same madness that she has notices earlier twinkling in his eyes. "Others are in here for breaking the rules of society. Theft, vandalism, or – as you might have guessed: Arson." At this his grin widens and seems almost manic.

"And others are here, simply because they are mutants." Rogue says to him, giving him a small smile.

He nods, still grinning.

"At least the B-block is nicer than the other ones." he says. Then, seeing the question in her eyes, he continues to explain. "You've seen the A-block." he says. "The white one where all the new one are put until they are checked in. And this is the B-block, the second one." He holds up two fingers. "Then there's the three others, the S-block, for the ones with Special powers." He raises another finger. "The E-block, for the escape-artists and the X-block for the uncontrollable." All five fingers of his left hand is spread as he holds out his open palm towards her, almost as if expecting a high-five. When she does nothing of the sort, he lowers his hand and shrugs.

"If you have weird powers that you can't control or you use them too much you'll be sent to the S-block. There they have all the equipment for repressing them, like these horrid metal collars." His hand goes to his neck, as if being strangled. " But other than the collars and medication it is supposed to be and okay place, much the same as this one. If you continue to cause trouble they send you onward to the E-block, where they have extra suppression equipment and less mobility. I don't know for sure, as nobody has returned from there to tell about it. The guards say that it is a horrible place and there are stories floating around about brutality and torture." He shrugs as if it has nothing to do with him.

"What about the last block?" Rogue asks him, filled with morbid curiosity.

Pyro grins at her again.

"They say it is a place for beast." he whispers like a mad-man. "A place where you are reduced to being an animal, and where all human thoughts are chased from your mind."

He nods towards her ruined gloves, his eyes touching the holes where her claws had been.

She shivers, goosebumps spreading up her back. It seems he does not notice, and for that she is glad. She is even gladder when the bell rings and they have to hurry to their cells. Suddenly she is all too eager to get away from Pyro's grin.

.

o.O.o

.

Turns out that every day, at eight o'clock, the doors spring open for the inmates to go eat breakfast. For those who have insulted Lucy, the doors open thirty minutes later. From then they are free to wander about the hallway or go to the large hall where tables, games and other things are kept. There are even a couple of bookshelves. There is also a couple of closed off windows, probably where the food enters and leaves. Rogue would not know, for she has yet to eat anything. It is also from this hall that there are doors to the showers and the bathrooms. Not that she fancies going there just yet. The few female mutants there is in the prison are unfriendly or just plain hostile. Rogue is smart enough not to count on their help, should the male inmates try anything while she is in the shower.

At ten, the warning bell sounds and they have to hurry to their cells. There they are locked op til half-past eleven, where lunch is served. Again, Rogue's door does not open until half an hour later when all traces of food are gone.

Pyro shows up at her cell, just as the door opens, grinning as he has all day.

"Maybe you should just stay in there a bit, beastie." he says. "Rikey and Norman is wandering about."

Not that he gives her a choice, standing so close to the door that it would be impossible to open it without showing him back. Hidden for the guards, he makes a small waving motion with his right hand. Just a flick of the wrist.

Rogue frowns.

"And what if I do not wish to stay in here?" she asks, standing op from her bed and taking a step closer to him. That is when he flicks his hand again, and she sees something between his fingers: Bread. She smiles, a crooked smile, as she realises his deception.

"Well then," Pyro says. "Then I'll just leave, you know?"

Rouge shakes her head.

"No, you can stay there." she says. "Just don't enter my cell." She walks over to him, reaching for the bread, but he moves it outside of her reach with a grin.

"What will you trade me?" he asks.

Rogue squints at him, but is honestly not surprised. She had learned long ago that nothing was for free.

"I have nothing and you know it." she tells him.

"A favor." he says, shrugging. "You'll owe me one."

She hesitates.

"What kind of favor?" she asks him. She has had no food since before the hotel, and she is actually beginning to grow sort of light headed because of it.

"If you ever get sent to the S-block, I want you to find a friend of mine." Pyro says. "And then I want you to give him something for me." he smiles.

Deciding that it sound relatively harmless, she has no plans to go to the S-block anyway, she nods and reaches for the bread again. This time he lets her take it.

"Don't let the guards see you eat that." he whispers, before turning and walking away, hands behind his back, whistling. His spiky hair pointing in every possibly direction. There is a sort of reddish shine to its brownish color.

She eats the bread quickly, hidden by the walls of her cell, before stepping out in the hallway, all too sure of the truth in Pyro's words when he had said that no guard would move to help her if another mutant caught her in her cell.

Instead she wandered to the great hall where she had spent the last outing-time together with Pyro and went over the bookshelves. Small labels at the top of every shelve made it clear that bringing books to the cells were not allowed and that they should only be read in the hall. She looks around, curious as to why nobody seems to be reading then. Noby seems to be doing much of anything, to be honest.

Some of the mutants stand in small groups of two or three, but they are silent. There are no conversations in the hall or hallways, and the few that she has heard have been hushed and quiet. In fact, as she thinks back to earlier in the day, people had looked upon Pyro with judging eyes as he loudly told her about the blocks, grinning all the time. Most of the mutants are sitting by themselves, silent.

One girl, a teenager really, is murmuring to herself as she rocks from side to side, small bubbles sometimes escaping strange air-holes along her cheekbones.

Maybe it is because they are all wearing the same mad-house white clothes as Rogue is, or maybe it is because it is all just plain old creepy, but suddenly Rogue is frightened again. What small sense of normality the talk with Pyro had brought her disappears and she abandons the bookshelves for the relative and perhaps illusive safety of her cell. Right now she does not care for Pyro's warning. Everything is better than the eerie hall and the ghost-like figures of the hallways.

Besides, it is not like any of them can hurt her even if the guards will not help her in her cell.

She pulls the cell door closed, aware that it does not lock, and sits on her bed, pulling her knees to her chest again.

She keeps her gloves on. It feels strangely safe, normal, to be wearing them.

Leaning her forehead to her knees, she pushes away her anxiety and fear, focusing on her breathing.

At around three o'clock the doors are locked again. This time guards come to take away some of the mutants from their cells. Rogue sees them being dragged off, hears them protest and cry, and sees them return later, tired, broken, hurt. One cell remains empty as its occupant does not return.

At seven the doors unlock for dinner, and again Rogue's is half an hour late in opening. She stays in her cell, huddling against the wall, her blanket pulled tightly around her, shielding her from the world.

An hour later, no more than eight o'clock, the doors lock again.

This time Lucinda is among the guards picking up mutants, and she unlocks Rogue's cell with a smile and a friendly "Hello, dear." as the two guards by her side steps into the cell, forcing Rogue to come along to the lab-room where new tests has to be run.

.

o.O.o

.

It was not Styker who stood ready to test her this time. From what she gathered from the guards and the new doctor, Dr. Harrow, he was too busy with the government. Dr. Harrow, it turned out, was worse than Stryker. He lacked Stryker's hate for mutants, but instead he had a morbid curiosity when it came to their genes and abilities. That, coupled with his sadism and carelessness towards human, or mutant, lives, led to experiments that even Lucinda seemed unwilling to partake in.

In fact, her normally friendly face and tone turns almost hostile when she sees him.

"Remember," she says. "That this one is not to be harmed excessively as she might be a key to the final cure."

Her use of the word excessively made Rogue's fear soar to new heights.

Dr. Harrow just shrugs.

"Fine." he says. "I haven't got much planned for today anyway."

He signals the guards who brings Rogue over to a chair. She sits down, not wanting to waste her energy on useless rebellions. She fears that she would come to need it soon enough.

Her fears turn out to be entirely, horridly, painfully, true.

* * *

o.O.o


End file.
